The Past & Present Reading Group is discussing, in the first half of 2024, Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft) written during 1857–1858. This work is often considered a crucial read to grasp Marx’s methods of analysis, with Marx diving off Hegel as one might a springboard. Yet our group has immediately plunged into deep swirling waters of postcapitalist debates over money. This is hardly surprising given that Notebook I of Grundrisse centres on money. Money and Marx In his ‘Chapter on Money’, Marx critiques certain thinking on money by eco ..read more

Political Economy seminar The Problem of History in IPE: An Intellectual History Speaker: Randall Germain, Carleton University When: 3-4pm, Wednesday, 24 April, 2024 Where: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 341, The University of Sydney About the talk: The idea of history, although present throughout much of the traditional canon of political economy and its internationalized off-shoot – international political economy (IPE) – is today largely erased as a key theoretical feature of IPE research. Where it is included as a part of the research enterprise, it is most often formulated as eit ..read more

Join Ben Spies-Butcher, Frank Stilwell and Gabrielle Meagher to launch Ben’s new book, Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation. Where: New Britannia Hotel, 103 Cleveland St, Darlington When: Wednesday 17th April, 5.30 for 6pm-7.30pm About Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation by Assoc Prof Ben Spies-Butcher Neoliberalism has made Australia less equal and our welfare system more brutal. But it has also changed the politics of inequality. Using examples from health to housing, unemployment to univers ..read more

Political economy seminar Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt Speaker: Mareike Beck, University of Warwick When: Wednesday 17 April, 3-4pm, 2024 Where: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 341, The University of Sydney, and Zoom About the talk: I will speak about my new book, Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. The book offers a new account of the Americanisation of global finance. It advances the concept of extroverted financialisation as an original framework to explain US-led financialisation. The pa ..read more

Last year I published an edited volume called Clickbait Capitalism. The title came as a surprise, even to me. The book was meant to be called Libidinal Economies of Contemporary Capitalism. No one was interested in the volume until I changed the title. This surely tells us something about the publishing industry and how it likes to market the political-economic. A list of recently published books includes the following: Chokepoint Capitalism, Crack-up Capitalism, Cannibal Capitalism. Whatever next? One pundit on Twitter cut to the heart of the matter: “Why not ‘capitalist’ capitalism?” Anyway ..read more

In our latest essay in Socialist Register 2024 we deliver a contribution to understanding contemporary geopolitics without shying away from placing our concerns within an analysis of capitalism. Spotlighting contributions across the social sciences we demonstrate a common tendency to avoid any reference to capitalism as a totality. Instead, mainstream approaches commonly strive for an emphasis on a multiplicity of contingent social factors shaping geopolitics that results in mystifying economic development. We therefore argue that there is a common allergy to capitalist totality as well as his ..read more

Factory farms are horrific places. Globally, labor conditions in animal agriculture are appalling,  with many workers facing unsafe conditions, low pay or no pay. The massive expansion of animal populations globally contributes to global warming, including through disproportionate land use and deforestation. Intensification of animal agriculture is a breeding ground for zoonotic disease. And of course, we know that factory farms are a nightmare for animals: these facilities rely on industrial scale forced reproduction, animals are routinely close confined, subject to deep controls over mo ..read more

In April, the School of Social and Political Sciences, in collaboration with the Justice and Inequality research priority of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, will be hosting Mike Savage, Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He has a longstanding interest in the social and historical sources of inequality, within and across nations. From 2015 to 2020 Mike was Director of the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, and his most recent book is The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Harvard University Press ..read more

In April, the School of Social and Political Sciences, in collaboration with the Justice and Inequality research priority of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, will be hosting Mike Savage, Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He has a longstanding interest in the social and historical sources of inequality, within and across nations. From 2015 to 2020 Mike was Director of the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, and his most recent book is The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Harvard University Press ..read more

The University of Sydney welcomes applications for the position of Lecturer in Political Economy (Education Focused) (Level B) The position is based at the School of Social and Political Sciences and will significantly contribute to the Discipline of Political Economy’s pluralist, heterodox and interdisciplinary program of political economy teaching and learning at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The appointee will also conduct research in their field of study and/or in pedagogical practice, design and evaluation, and contribute to educational and other leadership and governance pr ..read more